Holiday Ride Slot Review
An Italian street at dusk, the Colosseum glowing pink behind the reels and a street lamp burning beside a striped awning. Holiday Ride puts you on a cobbled Roman corner and leaves you there, and the view is easy on the eye.
It’s a prettier game than it is a deep one. Nearly everything it pays flows through a single wild multiplier trick, with one bonus round and a modest ceiling carrying the rest, and the wilds are what make it interesting.
Pragmatic Play built this one on a 5×3 grid with 25 paylines, running at 96.56% RTP with medium volatility and a win ceiling of 5,000x the bet. That’s a shorter ceiling than Sugar Rush 1000 or Gates of Olympus 1000, closer to the scale of Hot Fiesta.
Base Game and Symbols
Wins pay left to right across the 25 fixed paylines, with only the highest combination counting on each line and multiple line wins added together. Stakes run from 0.25 to 350.00 per spin. It’s a traditional layout, and Holiday Ride doesn’t bend it.
The symbols carry the theme through the streets of Rome. A tourist, the Colosseum, a taxi, a suitcase, shopping bags and a traffic light make up the picture end, with A, K, Q, J and 10 filling the lower reaches. All pays are multiples of the total bet, not the line bet.
- Tourist: 2x, 6x, 30x the total bet for three, four, five
- Colosseum: 1.4x, 4x, 20x
- Taxi: 1x, 2.4x, 12x
- Suitcase: 0.8x, 1.6x, 8x
- Shopping Bags: 0.48x, 1x, 6x
- Traffic Light: 0.32x, 0.8x, 4x
- A / K: 0.2x, 0.4x, 2x
- Q / J / 10: 0.08x, 0.2x, 1x
The wild is a scooter, and it does more work than wilds usually do. It substitutes for everything except the bonus symbol, and every wild carries a random 2x, 3x or 5x multiplier on each spin. That multiplier applies to the whole win of each payline the wild forms part of.
Where more than one wild sits on the same winning payline, their multipliers add together rather than multiply. Two 5x wilds on one line is a 10x boost. That’s where the bigger base game wins come from.
Five wilds on a line is the richest combination in the game at 40x the bet, comfortably ahead of the tourist. The wild also pays on its own, at 2x for three, 10x for four and 40x for five, so a wild-only line is never a consolation prize.
The bonus symbol, a bee, appears only on reels 1, 3 and 5 and pays in any position. Three of them award 3x the total bet on top of triggering the feature.
The autoplay menu sits beside the spin controls, and the space bar starts and stops each spin. Everything else is where you’d expect to find it.
Free Spins and Sticky Roaming Wilds
Three bonus symbols, one on each of reels 1, 3 and 5, trigger the free spins round. Before it begins, a 3×3 grid of pinatas appears and each one explodes to reveal a number of spins. The totals are added together, so the round awards anywhere from 9 to 27 free spins before a single reel turns.
It’s a small reveal, but it front-loads the round with a genuine question. A nine-spin round and a 27-spin round of the same feature are very different propositions, and nothing about the trigger tells you which one you’ve got until the pinatas have all gone.
Inside the round, the wilds change character. Every wild that lands stays on screen for the rest of the feature and shifts to a new random position on every free spin.
Each one still carries a 2x, 3x or 5x multiplier that applies to every payline it forms part of, and these sticky roaming wilds are the round’s engine of accumulation. A screen with several wilds drifting into the same lines can build quickly, and a cluster of five-wild lines late in a long round is where the serious money lives.
Bonus symbols don’t appear during the round, so it can’t retrigger. A separate set of reels is in play for its duration.
Free spins wins are added to the payline wins and paid out once the round completes, with the full cycle total recorded in the game history.
Ante Bet and Bonus Buy
Holiday Ride offers two bet multipliers, and they change more than the stake. The choice sits in the bet menu alongside the coin value, and which one you pick determines how the rest of the game behaves.
- 25x multiplier – the buy option is available
- 35x multiplier – more bonus symbols on the reels and a higher natural trigger chance, but the buy is switched off
The buy itself costs 100x the total bet and instantly triggers the free spins round, pinata reveal and all. It’s only available on the 25x multiplier. The RTP edges down with each option: 96.53% on the ante bet and 96.49% on the buy, against 96.56% in the standard game.
Whichever route you take, the maximum win is capped at 5,000x the bet in both the base game and free spins. Reach that figure during a free spins round and it ends on the spot, the win is paid and the spins you had left are gone.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.2/10
Holiday Ride is a stroll rather than a sprint, and that’s the reason to take it: one good bonus round, watched wild by wild as it assembles on a sunlit Roman street. The free spins round is the best thing here, because the pinata reveal makes every trigger feel different and the sticky roaming wilds genuinely compound the longer the round runs.
The weakness is the ceiling. 5,000x is a modest top end for a game this volatile, and the base game between triggers is thin fare once the wild multipliers stop landing together. There isn’t much else to find.
It’s a good fit for players who like a bonus round that builds patiently and a theme that carries a whole game on its looks, and a poor one for anyone chasing the biggest numbers Pragmatic Play publish. For a pleasant evening in Rome, though, the ticket’s fairly priced.
Holiday Ride FAQs
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What is the RTP of Holiday Ride?
The RTP is 96.56% in the standard game. It drops slightly to 96.53% when using the Ante Bet and 96.49% when buying free spins. -
Is Holiday Ride medium volatility?
Yes, Holiday Ride is a medium volatility game, so payouts are steady and range from low to very high. -
How do you trigger free spins in Holiday Ride?
Land three bonus symbols, which appear on reels 1, 3 and 5, in any position. Three bonus symbols also pay 3x your total bet. Before the round starts, a 3×3 grid of pinatas explodes to reveal between 9 and 27 free spins in total. -
What do the wilds do in Holiday Ride?
Wilds substitute for all symbols except the bonus symbol and carry a random 2x, 3x or 5x multiplier on every spin. In free spins they become sticky, staying on screen and moving to a new random position each spin. Multiple wild multipliers on the same payline are added together. -
Can free spins be retriggered in Holiday Ride?
No, there’s no retrigger. The spins the pinatas give you at the start are the full amount you play, and the feature runs to its finish on those alone. -
Can you buy the bonus on Holiday Ride?
Yes. On the default 25x bet multiplier you can buy the free spins round for 100x your total bet. When the 35x Ante Bet is enabled, the buy option is disabled, but more bonus symbols appear on the reels, improving the natural trigger chance. -
What is the maximum win on Holiday Ride?
5,000x your bet, which applies equally to the base game and the free spins round. Hitting the cap mid-round pays the win out and brings the feature to an immediate end. -
What are the stakes and paylines in Holiday Ride?
Bets run from 0.25 to 350.00 per spin on a 5×3 grid with 25 fixed paylines. All wins pay left to right, and only the highest combination counts on each line.
